This is the kind of article that really has me spitting feathers

[emkana]

how awful not to be able to afford school fees and foreign holidays

"Let's assume the middle class family has a combined income of £100000" - who are these people?

grrr

Interesting post cloudhopper.

I think our generation is definitely worse off than our parents. The street in which we live was originally built in the 1860's to house railway workers and unskilled workers in a nearby chemical factory. The houses are all small 2 up 2 down properties and now sell for around £260k, most people in our street are professionals probably earning good salaries but spending it all on the mortgage.

My inlaws live in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire in a Edwardian 4 bed semi they paid cash for it in 1972 (I think around £6k) my fil was a council worker at the time and my mil a housewife neither of them had any qualifications. Their house is now worth around £500k which is around 12 x our income so we would not have a hope in hell of affording it and yet dh is middle management level for a very large company and between us we both have master level qualifications and are professionally qualified in our fields. As for saving to buy your own home outright I do not think that there is anywhere in the country where you can do that although it was relatively common in the 60s/70s.

V. interesting cloudhopper.

I just feel that government(central and local) policy, as well as the media is always centred around stopping people doing what they want. I have heard various solutions from different agencies to the problems of our time:

1. "What we need to do is persuade people that they want to live in a 2 bed flat instead of aspiring to live in a house with a garden?"

2. "How can we get women back into the workplace?"

3. "How can we stop people driving their cars unnecessarily?"

And the answers to these are invariably negative and reactionary. 1) Only build 2 bed flats, 2) stop their benefits if they don't, 3) price them off the roads.

I would like to see policy weighing up the aspirations of people and the quality of their lives alongside the costs of doing so. I would like them to explore the reasons why people do things and why they want the things they want, before they start telling them they can't have them.

Maybe that is behind the perception at the moment that this is not a great place to live, when in fact it probably is. Most people I know are either emigrating or considering it. Quality of life is being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

I think that the criticism of the article just demonstrates the culture of envy, competition and downright schadenfreude that has overtaken our way of life.

There may not have been much of a difference in difficulty levels in the eighties and the sixties (although I think if you look at the figures, it was more difficult for the average couple in the eighties), but it is much much more difficult today - the percentage of your income taken up by your housing costs, is even higher than it was in the eighties.

Haven't read all the thread but if you try to ignore the awful middle classness of it all there is a point to it. I do think people were better off in some ways way back in the 70's than they are today. In other ways not.

We have an average sized 3 bed house in a not particularly nice part of London we use a state school and we shop in Waitrose (DP gets a discount with his job) and Lidl and anywhere there are bargains. Our friends live in a tiny starter home and despite her having a well paid job would struggle to up size. In the 70's people thought nothing of having an average sized house. If we had not bought a 1 bed flat when prices were very low (mid 90's) we would not have this house now.

"Let?s assume the middle-class family has a combined income of £100,000"

oooh yes let's. Then we can get back to reality.... Don't know whether to laugh of cry at that one...

Like dros that house I mentioned below which we started with was a start and we moved up when we could from there. My parents waited 13 years after they married in 1953 before they could afford children or a house. The biological clock was ticking before it was affordable. Some men didn't marry until after 40 because of the same reasons in the 1940s and 50s.

But I'm not trying to argue it isn't expensive to buy a property. So if my daughter who is may be going to do the same work I do got married this year (about the age I did) and took the same job and married a teacher 6 years older or whatever they would need to raise £250k or so for the house that cost me £40k 20 odd years ago. But the wages interestingly have kept up. She would be on £30k and he about the same. So they would have a joint £60k income and if they borroed about 3.5x joint salary they could just about do it. Now we may just be lucky that that bit of that outer london borough hasn't had the house price growth and teachers etc got better pay rises than most in those 20 years but it certainly doesn't look like a major difference.

Not sure what my father's pay as a new consultant was in 1961 when they bought the house for £6k which is now worth £360k. But even there they put in central heating which it didn't have etc so it is a better house than it started so you'd expect increase in value.

Anyway still hard for children but still wise for them to buy something as soon as they can.

But I don't think wages have kept up. Even if you look at just the last 13-14 years, house prices have accelerated at a far faster rate. DW, as a teacher, started on about £15k - could have afforded a decent (if small) house even on her own in Sheffield 10 back in 1994, when 3-bed terraces were £40-45k (3 times salary).

Today, a bottom-of-scale teacher is on about £19-20k, and the same decent-it-small 3-bed terrace in the same area is £160k - 8 times salary.

The difference in the 80s was that the high inflation, high interest rate backdrop to the prices you quote meant there was a property 'ladder'.

With inflation very low and very low expectations of income growth, there is unlikely to be much upward progression for today's twentysomethings buying their first home.

This whole idea of a 'ladder' is about as long gone as people working for the same company all their lives.

I'm just an onlooker to this whole housing thingy. It's a non issue for us.

I stand to inherit enough to buy a small home upon my father's death, but he's got longevity in his genes, thankfully!

Nothing but flats being built in this town.

We'd have to leave the country to afford anything at all.

More and more, we've been considering it.

It's unfortunate, but hey, this no garden crap is getting old.

That is twice this week that I have been told that I am under the average national income. I have a three bed house in v. attrative area, we have on car and one holiday abroad (none of your package holiday either) a year. I bet DD would disagree if you told her that we lived in poverty

I'm thinking, oh, static caravan park . . .

Do they have those here?

At least it has a bit of garden around it and you don't have to troop up flights of stairs with two wee ones.

LVT, your income has fairly little to do with your wealth these days. Where you live and when you bought your house is much more relevant, so be happy!

DH recently received a mailshot from the alumni relations at his old Oxford college. He was asked to tick the box relating to his income. Despite his degree/subsequent professional qualifications/25 years' experience/responsible job his salary fell into the third to bottom box (of 7). A few weeks later I received a similar mailshot from my university - I fell into the second from bottom box. We would consider ourselves members of the educated middle class, working in professional occupations but our combined incomes are well below £100k. Fortunately we were able to get on the property ladder back in the 80s.I suppose if you live in Notting Hill with a Chelsea tractor etc your view on the world is somewhat restricted.

I'm beginning to think those people here who live in the caravans and move round from place to place have the right idea.

At least they don't get ripped off for council tax.

Ladder, interesting points. Most teachers can't do ladders, just picking on that one career because there isn't much difference in pay between qualifying and being 65. They never could before and they can't now. The male teachers at my husband's school would often have to club together 20 years ago to buy with another male friend or colleague. Many never got on the ladder at all or bought something cheap in France because they had school accommodation.

But in jobs with promotion and differences between what you start and end in then you use the ladder principle and that could still apply to my oldest daughter. When I was her age I was at the start of a salary progression which went up higher than inflation and house price rises and still does. Or the other traditional ladder if yo udon't make it in your career is you move away to areas of the country where you may or where house prices are cheaper or you buy somewhere cheap and have a big commute.

I accept also that the very cheapest one bed flats can be out of range to many people. Although of course it's only fairly recently people expected to buy at all. Buying a place was not always common.

Oh, it's one of those retirement sites. Yes, Fio, we have a lot of those in the US, particularly in warm places like Florida.

Oddly enough, though, housing got so expensive in Boulder, Colorado, that the static caravan parks there started to go upscale.

TBH having read it i think it is trying to be a spoof, but unfortunately too much 'real feeling' creeps into it. She really does feel poor. It's hilarious that she obviously thinks her readers woudl be amazed that anyone shops in charity shops. Who bloody doesn't? They've taken over the high streets.

what kills me is that she is the kind of woman who in the 70s would have written lengthy whinging articles about how the 'wealth-creators' were being denied the chance to invest in the UK by the punishing rate of income tax, which meant she only had a house with 4 spare bedrooms and could only afford a black and white TV licence, and had to write a bestseller to keep the wolf from the door. See Jilly Cooper for evidence.

I think that lots of middle class professions, who were traditionally reasonably wealthy, now find themselves not so.
Accountants, lawyers, doctors, architects, bank managers, civil servants etc etc, all of whom used to be considered comfortable, well off members of the community now tend to find that they don't have anything like the comparative wealth that the same professions of their parents generation had.
I am not saying that this gives them any "right" to whinge, but I think for many it comes as quite a surprise.

I feel poor too. I can't afford a holiday abroad somewhere with a private pool. I have to go places like St Lucia and bathe in the sea. That's just not on.

Bugsy - "Accountants, lawyers, doctors, architects, bank managers, civil servants etc" have now been joined by stockbrokers, designer hairstylists, fashion nobodies, advertising people etc. Everybody is middleclass nowadays, isn't it?